Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Cambodia likes to promote itself as an emerging mid-level income country rather than a least developed country, but the indications of development here are to a large degree a facade or veneer. Not much has changed for most of the country although the cities seem to bustle. In this environment, survival still takes precedence over artistic and cultural skills and values. If it works is much more important than how it looks.
The Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year) was February 10th but many homes and businesses still have their decorations on display.
Aesthetics is not a prominent concern in Cambodia. Much of daily life is still focused on survival and so details like cleanliness, order, discipline get ignored. An example is this installation of our wi-fi router at the Deaf Development Programme. This was a new building and the installation could have been placed anywhere and taken any shape. The final result on the main corridor of our building is what is easiest and most accessible rather than might look best.
Why should tuk-tuks have only red and yellow taillights?
You could be forgiven for not knowing there’s a van under this load of vegetables. How long do you think it took to load it? And how many rolls of tape were used?
Mangoes grow everywhere in Cambodia and everyone with land has at least one mango tree in the yard. And if you have a mango tree, you need a mango stick–a long pole with something on the end to pick mangoes off the tree. Here the DDP house mother uses a 12-foot pole to pick mangoes that are not yet ripe–but are a delicacy for Cambodians.
Here is the business end of a mango stick. This pole just has a cut off plastic water bottle on the end of the pole. It works, though. Sreymom got three mangoes while I was watching.
Many oddities and quirks show up in Cambodian culture and daily life and one never knows whether it is a US-based or European-based fad or whether it some novelty originated in Cambodia. I saw this face? design? under a car door handle recently. What is it an image of? Does it mean something? Does somebody think it’s cute? Who knows?
Earlier I marveled at how our former Maryknoll office manager put together piping and a pump to send water through a house he built–and where I now live. I was pleased when he added a new pump because it created greater water pressure–and also because it eliminated a plastic garbage container he was using as a water reservoir. Now for some reason he has brought back the reservoir.
I’m not so happy with that. The water system in Phnom Penh has won an award for purity so after quite a few years here, in my last house I was drinking water from the tap instead of buying bottle water. But now that the water goes through the green plastic container above I’ve had to switch back to purified water. Notice that the container has a large circular cover that doesn’t fit tightly and allows dirt, rat droppings, whatever, to get into the water. I’ll pass now on drinking it.